Some good references in here. But I don’t think it goes quite far enough so as to be obvious to the “classical” tech CEO.

There is nothing wrong with good technology, and there is nothing wrong with a good tech spec. The fatal mistake is in thinking that it ends there and somehow remains in a box.

Apple’s approach is one of what I call “joined up thinking”. They connect all of the dots.

I think the Penny Arcade piece is incomplete.

Apple took over the personal stereo market not because of their brand values, not because they had the “sexiest” piece of hardware (they didn’t) and not because they made “a product”. What Apple made was actually a “system” which is far more than a singular product and a result of joining up all of the dots.

They built iTunes.

What Apple realised is that no matter what the hardware does or how sexy it is or how incredible the technology is, it’s all completely irrelevant without *content*.

What Apple did is to productise *content* and not to productise *technology*.

In doing so, they built an entire eco-system, which has now extended out into applications (and I feel will continue to extend).

They achieved this by understanding that technology is really just an enabler to something else (in this case listening to music). It’s the music that’s important, and access to it, not the box that plays it.

It’s the joined up thinking of end to end value chain that Apple gets so well and results in good products.